To Howl At The Moon
by the ramblin rose
Summary: Mandrea (Merle Dixon, Andrea) AU, Caryl (Daryl Dixon, Carol) secondary/appearances. He's always been a lone wolf, drawn by the prowl and the thrill of the escape. She's a she-wolf content to be alpha female of her own domain. But even the most cunning and elusive creatures can sometimes be captured. Rated M for language, some violence, and sexual content.
1. Chapter 1

**AN: So in my line of getting some ideas out there that have been driving me mad to get out of my head, I figured that I would go ahead and offer this one for those who are interested.**

**This is the first story I've done that's primarily a Mandrea story with Caryl as a secondary ship. Usually my stories are the other way around. However, I've had the hankering to play with Mandrea as a primary ship for a while and figured I'd finally give in. This is an AU…no Walkers.**

**For those who are new to my stories, I do take characters OOC from time to time to suit the world that I've built for them to play in and that might be the case here as well. **

**As I said before, I mostly wanted to start this story to play with this pair so we'll see where all I end up going. I'm sure that it will possibly (probably) end up being at least somewhat smutty since that tends to happen with me and Mandrea. **

**If it needs to be said, I do not own the Walking Dead or its characters. I'm just playing with them. The only things that I own are the plot and the OCs that I created. **

**I hope you enjoy the first chapter! Let me know what you think! **

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Merle had one damn thing on his mind when he got to the Coyote Crossing bar…and it was the same damn thing he had on his mind just about every time he walked into any place with a similar appearance and atmosphere.

He had full intentions of getting fucked up enough not to remember anything that had happened during the whole damn day…and he had high hopes of finding some piece around there he hadn't already topped once or twice before while managing to avoid any overly clingy previous conquests.

Coyote Crossing was a newer bar for him…about half an hour's drive away from where the hell he usually went, but he'd really run the pickings dry at the last place and it was time to branch out. He wasn't much for seconds…and he sure as shit wasn't given to liking thirds.

Merle walked into the dirty bar, taking in all the glory that it had to offer in a matter of minutes. Once you'd been in any place like this it was all the same.

The varying levels of drunks holding down their given locations throughout were a given…most of them locals and many of them he'd get to know on one level or another before he branched out, hoping to find another bar within driving distance of where he hung his hat.

The barmaids were important to know and to know well…but you didn't fuck them. Fucking them could ruin your whole experience at the bar because as soon as you loved one and left them, if they were of the clingy variety, then you couldn't go back to the place without dealing with them hanging on you…why didn't you call me? Didn't you miss me? When the hell we gonna see each other again? Not to mention that a pissed off bar-bitch was worse than a thorn stuck in your ass when you were looking to meet someone new…someone different.

It was best, if there was one that just begged to be banged, to safe that little treat for last and move to her when you'd cleared the rest of the place out of its goods…then you could hope that by the time you made the rounds again and ended back up there, not only the clientele had been refreshed, but the barmaids were new as well.

And more importantly than the barmaids, the most important people to know of all of them perhaps, were the proprietors. Merle always made it a point to at least get on speaking terms with whoever owned whatever bar he was in.

They had the goods…and if you were in good with them, they didn't bitch about tabs that didn't always get paid on time and they might even be kind enough to point you in the direction of some new, fresh face that you might have missed as you surveyed the possibilities before.

It was an art form, really, and it was one that Merle had mastered like some people might master painting fine damn pictures or playing instruments…or planning bank heists.

Scoring ass, booze, and the occasional extra substance good for providing entertainment in dirty bars…that was what the hell Merle was good at doing.

Merle scoped the place out quickly enough and made his way to the bar, his first stop at any new location, pounding his hand down to draw the attention of the man behind it…a man who looked about as bored as a body could be.

When Merle announced his presence, though, the young man behind the bar shifted his weight and set his body in a forward motion.

"What'll it be?" He asked.

Merle hummed to himself.

"Whisky…" Merle said. "Cheapest damn rot gut ya got…"

The young man nodded his head and a moment later produced a bottle and a shot glass from under the bar that he filled and slid toward Merle. Merle downed it quickly and waved the young man to pour him another, downing it just as quickly before leaving the glass to be refilled and sit a moment.

Merle looked around the place, noticing that the bored young man behind the bar didn't seem in any hurry to move from where he was…but the place was really only a pulse or two away from being dead, so Merle didn't see where he had too much to scurry off to. Even the two working barmaids in the joint were barely working…one of them watching a dart game while the other chatted up a table she was probably hoping for decent tips from.

"This place always so damn dead or it a special occasion?" Merle asked the man behind the bar.

And apparently the question was amusing because the young man chuckled and Merle echoed it to keep from being left out of the joke.

"Tuesday night…nothin' here on Tuesday except the die hards and the newcomers…and some damn times the newcomers lookin' to be die hards," the young man said.

Merle chuckled and offered a hand to the young man. The young man took it shook it with all the force Merle figured a body of his size could muster…if he was really old enough to be serving liquor, Merle would be surprised. His parents probably owned the joint…give it to him to run…some kind of job for a kid who might not find work elsewhere, Merle figured.

"Merle Dixon," Merle offered.

"Timothy…Tim…Burns," Tim responded.

The pickings were slim when it came to women in the bar, Merle could see that at a glance…and he hoped it was owing to the fact, like Tim had said, that it was Tuesday. Otherwise the Coyote Crossing might not turn out to be the kind of place that Merle had much need to frequent.

There were, as was customary at any of these places, the two or three old road whores, as Merle typically thought of them. They were always gathered together until they were pulled apart…usually by people so damn drunk that staying on their feet had become a full body sport. They were past their prime…or if they weren't…they sure as hell looked it. And they were always a rough and rowdy bunch just as likely to end up in a bar brawl as any of the burly ass men in the joint.

Merle steered clear of those because they were typically regulars…and a fuck and run could bite you in the ass real damn quick with one of them.

Other than that, it looked to him that just about every other piece that was in there…and that was still less than he could count on one hand…was paired up.

He'd either gotten there too damn late and missed his window of opportunity, or it was still too damn early and he just had to wait on one of the assholes to get up and move along to happier trails.

Either damn way, Merle was set to have a few more drinks before he had to slow his ass down to guarantee that he could drive back to where the hell he was staying without getting noticed by any of the nice officers.

Merle downed the shot in front of him and nodded at Tim who was watching him because there was relatively little else to watch in the place and then he sunk into his stool and settled in to shoot the shit with the boy…mostly working to find out what he could about who owned the place and what the hell a good damn night might look like there.

And he found out he was right…he'd called it in the air. Tim's parents owned the place and he worked it with the promise that one day all this…all the damn glory that was the hole in the wall bar that smelled of cigarettes and stale ass liquor…could someday be his.

And he found out that, at least Thursday through Saturday, the Coyote Crossing was a promising place for finding some pussy…Thursday being ladies' night and the kind of night that brought a smile to Merle's face when he found an establishment that offered one.

Ladies' night meant a lot of ladies…and it also meant the good damn chance that a lot of them were showing up looking for something…something he was more than happy to give them.

He might not score tonight…but Thursday it was sounding like he could have the damn pick of the litter…and he was already flying high on just the prospect.

Merle was leaning on his elbow, Tim having abandoned him to go and tend some drunks at the corner of the bar on the other side, and thinking about if it wouldn't be time to call the night a loss soon and pull it in for the night when a peroxide blonde, dressed to at least wound, saddled up to the bar and banged the palm of her hand down, three stools away from Merle.

And he recognized her as one of the women that had been paired up earlier…one who had caught his attention but was working to catch the attention of the man across the booth from her…but a quick glance in her old direction told Merle that her deal had fallen through…and tuning in on her conversation with Tim just sealed it.

"Place has gone to hell Tim when I gotta buy my own drinks," the blonde declared with a laugh.

"Shit went to hell when you started comin' in to drink on Tuesday's, Andrea," Tim declared, sliding a drink across the bar toward the blonde.

Seeing his window open up and not wanting to let the fresh ass box of Trojans he bought go to waste, Merle slipped off his stool and crossed over quickly enough to offer out a piece of folding money, sliding it almost under the blonde's nose.

"Lady's drinkin' on me, buddy," Merle said. He slipped onto the stool next to the blonde…Andrea…without asking permission, having found years ago that the next steps came easier if they didn't have the chance to refuse him the first move toward setting something up.

Andrea cut her eyes at him, sizing him up…trying to decide if she was going to be a bitch or if she was going to play the game. Merle knew that look…it was an exciting ass look to see in the eye of a woman at a bar.

Because there were typically two kinds of women at bars like these. There were the ones who didn't know how to play the game, and those who did. The ones who didn't know how to play the game were easy to spot. They were big eyed and flattered by every move you made. They were amazed to see you winning them over, inch by inch, step by step, and wore the same damn look of wonder that a kid got when you pulled a quarter from behind their ear and they weren't expecting it.

They were easy to win over, but fucking them was typically less exciting than anything your right hand and a bottle of lotion could bring you…because they didn't know what the hell they were doing there any better than they knew what the hell they were doing in a bar.

But the ones who knew how to play the game? They were a breed apart. And you could land with a sweet one…just like honey on your tongue…or you could land with a hellcat and a half. Therein lie the gamble.

But it was a gamble that Merle would take every damn time because whether she was sweet or whether she was hell…if a woman could play the game she could most likely light your ass up in the bedroom.

Apparently Andrea decided her prospects weren't too damn good, because her face dissolved a little and lost some of the hardness that she'd been wearing while deciding if she was going to accept his drink or tell him to go to hell.

"Quite the gentleman?" She said in a tone of voice that left it up to interpretation if it was a statement or a question.

Merle grunted and nodded his head.

"Fine woman such as yaself deserves that…ain't that right?" Merle asked, raising his eyebrow at her.

She smiled softly. She wasn't showing her cards. Sweet or hellcat…she was keeping it under wraps.

"You drinking too…or just watching me?" Andrea asked.

Merle chuckled and waved Tim down, asking for another drink, and then he lit a cigarette and offered her the pack. When she accepted, he lit her cigarette and smirked to himself at the way her lips curled into a smile as she exhaled the smoke of the first drag.

"Name's Andrea," Andrea offered.

Merle snickered and offered a hand to her.

"Got a last damn name or ya like fuckin' Cher?" Merle asked.

Andrea smiled.

She took his hand, shaking it gently and without any real commitment and she retracted it quickly, wrapping it back around the glass she was sipping from.

"Don't do last names," Andrea offered, turning her attention back to her drink.

Merle licked his lips when he noticed her not looking at him. He took the moment to look her up and down. She would do fine…just fine…and he wondered why the hell the asshole that had her hooked earlier would be dumb enough to let her spit bait and not go in after her…and if that wasn't the case and he threw her back…Merle figured the asshole really was a dumb fuck.

She was built nice…nicer than most of the women that he'd picked up in places like this. She had smooth legs that went all the way up…enough tits to get a good damn handful without worrying that the things were going to drag the ground behind her when she ditched her shirt…and enough ass and padding, from what he could tell, to guarantee he wouldn't get the sickening dig of hip bones trying to gut his ass when he had her legs as close to her damn ears as he could possibly get them.

"You got a name or are you just keeping that a secret?" Andrea asked, some sarcasm seeping into her voice.

Merle chuckled.

"Merle…Merle Dixon," he commented. "Might oughta remember that shit…ya gon' need it later…"

And it was a risky move. It was a move that had a fifty fifty chance of paying off. Some women would take the line as their sign to check the hell out of there and go somewhere else…but others would accept it, find it amusing…and those were usually the ones that were more inclined, or had already decided, to ride your dick later on in the span of an evening.

When Andrea smirked but didn't balk at the line, Merle smiled to himself.

The Coyote Crossing might not be such a bust after all.


	2. Chapter 2

**AN: Here we go, a second chapter. I'm not 100% pleased with it, but it takes me a while sometimes to get into my "rhythm" with stories…so it is what it is. **

**I guess there's something of a smut warning, but I'll go ahead and let anyone who doesn't know it already know that my Mandrea fics tend to be somewhat smuttier than any of my other fics…I don't know why…it just happens more often. There's also an AN at the end that you should read so that you're not shocked/offended/etc. at any point with the smut.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Andrea hadn't driven to the Coyote Crossing…Merle had learned that as their evening had drawn to a close and they had waited out last call. She'd come with the asshole who'd ditched her.

And Merle figured it was his loss because he'd fed her enough drinks to have her making bad decisions even if she hadn't come with that in mind…which she clearly had.

When they'd finally left the bar, Merle had helped her out to his truck. He was drunk, but she was a little bit drunker and loose slag over old, uneven asphalt was a well-known enemy to high heels…especially if the person operating the heels was at least two sheets to the wind.

And by the glory of all his practice driving under the influence without appearing to local law enforcement to be that way, Merle got them back to the trailer that he shared with his brother…or rather the trailer that he shared with his brother whenever the hell is brother bothered to be home…he was shacking up half the damn time with his girlfriend…or she would occasionally spend the night at the trailer…so he wasn't quite as permanent a feature in Merle's life as he once had been.

"Home Sweet Fuckin' Home, Sugah," Merle said, guiding the woman into the trailer.

And having left behind the rocky parking lot, she was steadier on her feet than he'd thought she was.

And she wasted no time making herself at home, ridding her feet of the shoes that were trying to break her neck just as she came in the door.

The change made her shrink a few inches, but Merle wasn't interested in her height.

"Well isn't this…cozy," she mused, looking around the trailer that had been manufactured forever ago and held a décor that Merle teased was "retro chic" after he saw the term somewhere, and not even knowing what the hell it meant, took a shine to it.

"You done drinkin' or just gettin' started?" Merle asked.

Now that he realized the blonde was not nearly as drunk as he thought she'd been when she was tottering on the rocks outside Coyote Crossing, he didn't feel the need to cut her off to keep her from passing out cold.

"Got a bathroom? I'd like to freshen up…and I'll have a drink…" Andrea said.

Merle gestured with his hand toward the hallway where she'd find the only bathroom in the place beside the little one in his brother's room that was more like a closet with a toilet and a sink that didn't work half the time and sent a howling noise through one whole side of the place when you used it that sounded like foxes in heat.

"Right down there…ya want'cha whiskey straight up or on the rocks?" Merle asked.

"Straight up," Andrea responded, heading toward the bathroom that Merle had pointed out to her.

Merle's practice with women was something almost tried and true for him…but already things were different with Andrea.

Usually he brought them home with him if they drove. The fact that they could be sober enough to make it his trailer meant that, after sweating some of the alcohol out of their systems, he didn't feel like they were stranded and he had no problem telling them to up and get their asses back to their own homes.

If the women didn't drive…he typically would spring for one of the cheap ass motel rooms on the edge of town…twenty bucks was a fair price for a lay and a foolproof escape plan…and there he'd leave their asses when he was done…and they could figure out their own way home in the morning whenever they checked out of the place.

But with Andrea he'd already brought her home, not exactly sure why even, instead of going to a motel…which meant that he was going to have to take her home when it was time for her to go to keep from being an even bigger asshole than he normally embraced being.

He figured, though, that he could deal with that shit later…right now it was time to reap the rewards of having spent all night drinking with her…though it hadn't been the worst company he'd ever kept at a bar such as Coyote Crossing.

When Andrea came back through the kitchen, she was shaking out her hair, apparently having removed whatever implement had been holding it up, and she offered him a smile as she took the glass from his hand that he offered her.

"You live alone?" She asked.

"Nah…my brother lives here…when he ain't shackin' up with his girl," Merle said.

He hoped she didn't think that he was like his brother…because they had entirely different views on women, domesticity, and what they hell they wanted out of life. Daryl was the sweet one and he'd offered himself up to be neutered quick enough. That wasn't Merle's cup of tea.

Andrea raised an eyebrow at Merle and smirked.

"You got a bedroom…or are you the couch dwelling type?" She asked, waving her whiskey glass under her nose to find, probably to her surprise, that Merle's personal stock boasted good liquor.

Merle smirked and lowered his eyebrows at her.

She knew how to play the game alright…and Merle was relieved to think that she had just as little interest in shacking up as he did. She knew why the hell they were here…and it wasn't to pick out fucking curtains and talk about what the hell to name their future kids.

They were here to fuck, plain and simple…it's what she wanted…and he was a man who aimed to please.

"Right through here, darlin'," Merle growled, leading the way to his room.

Merle's room was simple enough. He wasn't one for flash and flair and he sure as shit wasn't one of those people who wasted his time and his energy on things like decorating. He had furniture he'd picked up second hand and it existed to fill functions…that was it.

And honestly, he had nice sheets and pillows…but the only reason he could even boast having that was because Daryl's little girlfriend, a practical living Betty Crocker or something, had come through when she'd started staying there and replaced a lot of the shit that they'd had forever…linens included.

"Nice," Andrea purred, sitting down on Merle's bed. He closed the bedroom door, just in case Daryl were to come in at some point, and leaned against the wall, nursing his whiskey. He wasn't going to bark orders at her or tell her she couldn't sit on the bed…she looked like a woman who had put on a show or two in her life and he was curious to see how the hell she might choreograph things.

"How…" Merle stopped and sucked his teeth. For some women…the doe eyed innocents who didn't know what the fuck was really going on…he might try to sugar coat shit a little…but for Andrea, he didn't feel like the extra spoonful of sugar was needed. "How ya wanna do this shit?"

Andrea hummed and changed her position, crossing her legs and leaning on the one arm that wasn't holding her drink.

"Oh…you've got more than one move in your bag of tricks?" She asked.

Merle chuckled at the challenge.

"Darlin'…I got all the damn moves…what's ya pleasure?" Merle asked.

Andrea echoed his sucking of teeth and tasted the amber liquid that she wasn't drinking with the same fever that she'd employed in the bar.

She tipped her head to the side.

"I don't think you could handle it," she said. She made a face that looked a little like she was disappointed in whatever she was thinking about. "So…we'll just go with whatever you had in mind…"

Merle raised an eyebrow at her new challenge.

He considered himself pretty sexually well-versed…and he didn't like the suggestion that there was anything that this blonde could desire or dish out that his ass couldn't carry.

"Fuck's ya pleasure?" He growled again. "Don't reckon ya know what the hell I can handle an' what the hell I can't…"

She smirked at him and leaned, putting her glass on the nightstand. She got to her feet then, standing in place, and she worked her way out of the clothes she was wearing with enough grace that he couldn't begin to think that this was a woman who had very little practice taking her clothes off for show.

And once she was stripped of them, she stood there in front of him in a black lace bra and matching thongs…and that coupled with the fact that she was clearly meticulously groomed made Merle lick his lips quickly and confirmed for him the fact that she hadn't ended up here by accident…this was no accident at all.

"You like what you see?" She asked, running her fingers in the waist band of the black thongs and tipping her head to the side.

Merle chuckled and put his own glass down before he stepped toward her and wrapped his arms around her, unashamedly cupping her ass and pulling her up and against him.

And when she moved, licking his neck, he thought it was nice…he couldn't imagine what the hell might have led her to think he couldn't take anything she could dish out…and do so gladly. But he wasn't expecting her to latch her teeth onto him and he shoved her off out of the shock, hard enough to send her bouncing to the bed that was behind her to break her fall.

And she pulled her legs up, chuckling quietly as he rubbed at the spot where he was sure she'd at least slightly broken the skin.

"What's ya fuckin' problem?" He spat. "Crazy ass bitch!"

Andrea laughed lightly.

"Take your clothes off," she said. "Unless you're leaving them on for some reason…"

Merle wanted to be pissed that the bitch had up and bit him, but she was there and she was looking pretty damn hot...and she was half naked and wanting what he wanted to give her…so he wasn't going to be too damn pissed.

Merle took off his clothes with less interest in putting on a show than she'd shown in her stripping. He wasn't playing games and he wasn't pretending that he wasn't already turned on…not that he could really hide it since he didn't even bother to try to wow her with his plaid boxer shorts.

He went to the nightstand and yanked the drawer open, fishing out the box of condoms and tossing one onto the bed so that it landed beside her.

She picked it up nonchalantly and opened it, offering him the condom to put on…so he stroked himself and did exactly what she'd insinuated he should.

And it didn't take them long to find each other and to tangle up in the first of kisses and gropes. And it didn't take Merle long to get rid of the bra that was keeping him away from the tits that he wanted to spend a little quality time with and that she allowed him, tossing her head back and digging her fingers into his head like she was demanding that he stay there…worshipping the breasts that his tongue and teeth were finding much to their liking.

"None of this love making, flowers and candy bullshit," Andrea said in a throatier voice than before as she shifted around on the bed, ridding herself of the underwear that she was wearing so that it dropped to the floor with everything else that had been cast off. "I'm here for you to fuck me…"

Merle chuckled, slipping his hand down to tease her and caress her, growing harder at finding her as wet and ready as she was. She wasn't playing around…and she wasn't going to be one of those that he had to spend half the night trying to work up to the whole reason that he'd brought her there.

"However ya want it, sugah," Merle said, pushing two of his fingers inside of her quickly and without warning…smiling at the way that she looked surprised at first and then she purred at him, moving up to lick at the spot on his neck that earlier she'd bit while he worked her.

He had a feeling…though he wasn't sure how much of it he dared to explore at the moment…that there might be more to this woman than he'd even suspected when she raked her nails down his back, biting at his chest. It wasn't something he was used to, but at the moment it wasn't something he disliked either…and he liked the jolt it sent through him.

And Merle sometimes felt sorry when he got, as he thought, a little out of hand and maybe fucked a woman a little harder or rougher than he'd intended.

He was an asshole, after all, but he still held something of pride in the fact that he treated the women he was with, while he was with them, with as much physical respect as he felt he should. And even though he didn't really want to see their asses anymore after they left…he didn't want them leaving feeling like it had been a total fuck up on their part to have ever gone with him in the first place.

And he was sure that was why there were always those that tried to come back for more…there were always those who thought that once should turn into twice…and twice should turn into picking out the damn curtains and naming the future kids.

But he knew by the time they both collapsed, sweaty and both a little bloody in places from the sex that had almost dissolved into a battle of sorts between them, that he'd been anything but gentle and anything but respectful with the woman.

But this time, he didn't feel sorry for it…because he had done, each step of the way, what the fuck she'd asked him to do…no matter how much it had thrown him for a moment and made him have to remind himself that she was far more sober than he'd originally thought…and that she was sober enough to know what the hell she was getting off from and what she wasn't.

And they'd both gotten off…and Merle felt tired and invigorated at the same damn time…so he figured it was mission accomplished.

Andrea got out of the bed, and Merle's first thought was that she was leaving…already knowing the drill and recognizing this for exactly what it was, but then he remembered that she didn't have a car.

"Fuck you goin'?" He asked.

She smiled at him.

"Refresh my drink…rinse off a little in the bathroom…that fine with you?" She asked.

He grunted and got up himself. Rinsing off might not be a bad idea because he had plenty on him he could stand to sleep without.

"Listen…I'ma take ya ass home…first damn thing in the mornin'…" he said.

Andrea nodded her head.

"Wouldn't expect any different," she said before she walked out the bedroom door…naked and apparently not even giving a fuck to check and see if Daryl might have come in during their little rendez-vous.

Merle stood there for a moment, shaking his head to himself.

He'd picked up a lot of damn women in his life…but he had a feeling that this one, well, she was a breed all her own. 

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**AN: So it should be said that the way in which I write Merle and Andrea usually has them both (at least eventually) sharing a certain "kink" with each other.**

**And they enjoy rough (and sometimes violent) flings with one another. But I know that for some people this is problematic or you want to assume the worst.**

**So I'm asking you to remember that they are two (fictional…but that's always beside the point) consenting adults who have a certain kink that they share with each other. Their games are just that…games…that they play with each other. They may insult/berate/etc. each other and things like that, but both of them do it as part of the game.**

**Nothing between them is a genuine act of violence or abuse. I don't condone that in any way. It is simply a way that they choose to perform with one another from time to time for their mutual pleasure. I just felt I should explain this before anything happens that gets anyone up in arms. **


	3. Chapter 3

**AN: Hello! I haven't abandoned this one. I just hadn't really had the feels to get back around to it just yet. But, here you go! **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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When Andrea woke up she was pleased to find that she hardly had anything at all of a headache. The man, Merle, that she'd gone home with the night before, the man who was snoring next to her now in complete unawareness of her presence, would probably have a much worse hangover than she had. He'd been the cocky kind that thought that her holding back on drinks was because she couldn't handle her liquor and he'd matched her every one drink with two of his own to show how impressive he was, or whatever it was that men seemed to get from that.

Andrea stayed in the bed a moment, remarking to herself that for such a rough man who lived in such a shit little trailer, Merle had nice sheets. Andrea didn't have champagne tastes in most areas of her life, but she did like nice linens. They always seemed worth it more than money spent on other things usually did.

She wasn't sure how she was going to get home. Merle had indicated that he would take her home, and she was fine with that when he'd first presented the idea, but then after their second romp and more of his bottomless drinks, she started to realize that he wasn't going to consider morning as happening around the time that she thought it should happen.

Andrea eased out of the bed, not to disturb Merle, and got up. Her clothes were scattered about and trampled on, but she wasn't trying to win any beauty contests. She wrestled into them quickly and roughly combed her hair with her fingers. She didn't know what she'd done with her hair clip, but it wouldn't be the first she'd left behind as something "to remember her by".

She opened the bedroom door and started toward the kitchen to get herself a glass of water and think about how she'd get home from here. She'd fucked him good, after all, and she figured that earned her a glass of water…or whatever she mind find in the fridge.

As she came out the bedroom and hopped toward the kitchen, though, she realized all too suddenly that she wasn't alone.

In the kitchen there was a man and a woman.

And she wasn't dumb enough not to be able to figure out they were likely the brother and the girlfriend that Merle had mentioned, even if the younger of the two didn't look very much like the older one.

Andrea smoothed her clothes slightly when she saw them gawking at her like she was something off the Discovery Channel, but she had long since stopped being ashamed of her escapades. If she'd been truly ashamed in the first place, she might have chosen a more respectable way of passing lonely nights a long time ago.

"You must be the brother…I don't remember your name," Andrea said, deciding to break the awkward magic of the moment.

It worked because the man nodded his head, glanced at the redheaded girlfriend who looked just on this side of horrified at Andrea's presence, and offered a hand to Andrea almost reluctantly.

She chuckled to herself. She might be a slut, but she was a clean slut. She shook his hand more heartily than he might have expected.

"Daryl," he offered.

"Andrea," Andrea offered in return.

She scratched her fingers through the thick mop of her curls and turned toward the skinny little girlfriend. She raised her eyebrows at her and the redhead looked like she was either confused or frightened.

"Carol," she offered softly.

There was no hand shake offered by her, and Andrea felt like she'd expended just about all the niceties she had for the morning. She nodded her head again.

"Can I have some water?" Andrea asked.

Daryl, standing now by the counter, his girlfriend at his side, reached up and got a glass out of the cabinet.

Andrea noticed that the two of them had apparently been making breakfast. She'd interrupted their cute little domestic moment of cooking. She smiled and took the glass.

"Your bacon's going to burn," she said, pointing at the stove so that the redhead, jumping slightly with the words or the realization, turned quickly and bumped Daryl out of the way with her hip to get to the stove.

Daryl sidestepped out of her way, his eyes on Andrea like she might rob them or something. She chuckled again.

"OK…I get it, this is awkward," she said. "But…hell…it's a lot more awkward for me than it is for you, don't you think?"

She glanced down to make sure that her clothes were on correctly and she wasn't accidentally standing there with her tits exposed or something. Satisfied that she was covered, she turned her attention back to them, both of them muttering something of apologies and working a little too hard now to be focused on anything other than the strange blonde in their kitchen.

Andrea saw a carton of juice on the counter, their glasses nearby, and she licked her lips. Orange juice would be about a thousand times better than water right now. She rarely remembered to buy it for her own house, but she loved the taste of it when she woke up with her mouth dry and sour after a night of drinking. She could probably drink the whole carton, in fact, in one large gulp, but that might further horrify the two people and she didn't want to be greedy.

"Could I have some of that juice?" She asked.

"Yeah…uh…whatever you want," Daryl offered.

"We're making breakfast," Carol offered, as though Andrea might not be able to figure out what a stove, eggs, and bacon were for. "There's a lot of it, you're welcome to a plate if you're hungry."

Andrea poured herself a glass of juice, gulping down more than she intended before she stopped to respond to them and to savor the last bit of it.

"No…I don't think so," she said. "I appreciate it and all, but I really need to, you know, get going."

Daryl nodded at her.

"Yeah, OK…" he responded. He hesitated obviously for a moment and looked at Carol. Andrea could clearly see that they were trying to have a silent conversation, those types of conversations that are so cute and quaint between people who have been together for a while and developed that kind of comfort and familiarity that make them possible.

"Do you have a way?" Carol asked finally.

Daryl walked over and looked out the door and Andrea slowly realized some of their confusion about her presence might be coming from the fact that she had no car. Some of their confusion, too, might be brought about the concern that she had once had a car, but it wasn't present now.

"Didn't see no car," Daryl offered from where he was looking out.

Andrea laughed and drained the remainder of her juice before she put the glass over into the sink where they were tossing all the dirty dishes they would, no doubt, wash later.

"I didn't drive," she said. "Merle brought me. It would be great, though, if someone could maybe run me home? I don't think he's going to wake up any time soon, and anyway I don't really _want_ to wake him if I don't have to."

Another of the convenient and silent conversations and Andrea was wishing she'd been smart enough to drive to Coyote Crossing instead of trusting that the dickhead she'd gone with would get her home. It was a hassle to be stuck without transportation, no matter how unreliable her car might be sometimes.

"Ya care?" Daryl asked Carol quietly.

Andrea could hear him just fine, but maybe he didn't think she could.

Carol shook her head.

"No, I can finish breakfast," she said. She turned toward Andrea. "Do you live far? Really there's enough breakfast for you to have some before you go."

Andrea shook her head.

"We're off where?" She asked.

Daryl cleared his throat.

"Pomplar," he responded.

Andrea smiled.

"I live just over on Teak…in the apartments," Andrea said. "Really, I appreciate the offer for breakfast, but I'd really just like to go home. Get a shower? You know…"

She was just short of striking out and walking down the street, high heels in hand, to escape Merle and the happy couple. It wouldn't be the first walk of shame in her life and she doubted it would be the last.

Daryl shook his head and wandered over to the table, plucking keys out of the fruit bowl that seemed to hold more trash and random objects than fruit.

"No…ain't nothin' but a thing," he said. "I'll run ya home."

He walked over and kissed Carol quickly on the lips while Andrea picked up her shoes and found her purse. She followed him out, both of them barefoot, to the truck that was clearly his, since it wasn't the one she'd come in the night before, and got in before he might feel inclined to be some kind of gentleman and open the door for her.

They rode in silence to her apartment building. There really wasn't anything for them to say. He didn't know her, she didn't know him, and she didn't imagine that they'd be seeing each other again unless it was in some kind of odd meeting in the A and P where they both struggled to figure out why the face of the person they'd nearly hit with a cart was familiar.

Andrea watched him out of the corner of her eye as he drove, his elbow in the window of the truck, chewing at his cuticle.

He was a handsome man, and looks must run in the family, but she preferred the rugged look of his brother to his more delicate features. Regardless, his little girlfriend wouldn't appreciate it very much if she wasn't of that inclination, and though Andrea had few reservations about what she did sexually, she had a pretty strict rule of not doing anything to interrupt any relationship that wasn't already headed right down the toilet.

When Daryl pulled up at the apartment building, he dropped the truck in reverse, a clear indication that he didn't intend to spend any extra time there and he had no reason to. Andrea slung open her door and dropped out on the hot asphalt.

"Thanks for the ride," she called on her way down. "Hey…do me a favor?" Andrea asked, turning around to get her purse and shoes.

"Yeah?" Daryl asked, looking like he didn't owe her any favors. That much was true too.

"Don't tell your brother where I live?" Andrea asked, standing now with her hand on the door.

Daryl chuckled.

"Yeah…don't worry," he said. "Don't know if he told ya this or not, but Merle ain't gonna wanta know where you live."

Andrea smiled and nodded.

"I know," she said. "But if he does?"

"Yeah," Daryl said dismissively.

Andrea thanked him again and closed the truck door. She didn't watch him pull out of the parking lot, she just went directly toward the building and up the staircase toward her apartment.


	4. Chapter 4

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here. **

**I don't know how often I'll update this one, but I might try to get back to it. It was requested, so I thought I'd do my best to see if I couldn't at least revisit this one. Eventually, though I don't know how soon, it will be a full fic. (And I hope an interesting one.)**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Merle woke up with the smell of the blonde's perfume everywhere. It was on his sheets, his blanket, his skin—it was in his nostrils as far as he could tell. But for the scent of her heavy in the room, he was alone.

He groaned to himself at the dull thudding headache that the whiskey—too much of it, really—had left from the night before.

She was up and roaming around his damn house somewhere.

But then he smelled the food. Merle sat up, took a moment to focus his eyes, and then got dressed before he emerged from his room and walked through the trailer to find his brother and Carol eating breakfast at the table.

Andrea wasn't around.

"The fuck you do with Andrea?" Merle asked. "The blonde?"

"Good damn mornin' to you too, sunshine," Daryl said. "Took her ass home when she asked."

As though to close out the phrase, Daryl picked up the plate of bacon between them and held it in Merle's direction.

"Eggs are on the stove," Carol said. "If you're hungry, we made plenty."

Merle stood there a moment longer, still gathering together the thoughts that didn't come together all too smoothly in his hungover mind, and then he turned toward the stove where an empty plate was waiting for him to fill it.

That was it. It was done. The hardest part of any conquest—the awkward morning after and the shaking off of the chick he didn't want to see again—was done. His brother had taken care of it for him. The blonde, fully aware of what was going on between them—which boiled down to be nothing more than the fucking they'd already done—was gone and without a fight at all. It hadn't been awkward. She wasn't asking when he was going to see her again or if he'd call—she hadn't even left a number or a last name. She was just gone.

And that was an odd sensation for Merle.

Because, most of the time, it was him that had ducked out and left a chick sleeping. It was him that had suggested, in no uncertain terms, that it was time for her to up and move on back to where she came from. It wasn't him waking up to find that he wasn't going to have to make the great escape because she'd done it for him.

And the blonde was gone—home—and he hadn't had to do a single bit of fancy stepping to get out of shit.

He fixed his plate and sat down at the table. For a moment he focused on his food in silence and Carol and Daryl seemed to both guard that silence with him.

"Ya took her home, huh?" Merle asked, slurring his words around his eggs after a moment.

Daryl hummed in agreement.

Merle echoed the hum, worked his way through another bite or two of food, and then spoke again.

"Where—uh—where the fuck she live?" Merle asked.

He looked at Daryl and caught an odd expression that passed over his brother's features. Daryl narrowed his eyes at him for a second before he nodded his head slightly but without explanation. Daryl chewed through whatever he was eating and swallowed it down.

"What the hell you care?" Daryl asked.

The question struck Merle mostly because it was the same question that was running through his own mind, except that this time it came with Daryl's voice attached to it.

He chuckled to himself, dismissing the thought.

"Fuck—figure out what kinda damn hussy I was fuckin' with," Merle commented.

He glanced at Carol, not even sure why, almost feeling like he needed some sort of confirmation from her.

She looked back at him, but only for a second, before returning to her food—she had little to no interest in Merle most of the time, and she had even less in his pursuit of pussy.

"Just—uh…" Merle stumbled for an explanation, but there wasn't one to give. How could he explain to his brother his reasoning for a question when he didn't understand it himself?

Daryl shook his head slightly at him.

"Look to be higher quality than some I've seen crawlin' 'round your ass," Daryl said. He chuckled to himself. "Prob'ly her oughta be worried."

Merle hummed.

Daryl hadn't answered his question. He hadn't told him where he'd taken the blonde. Merle would've known himself, if he'd taken her home the way that he'd planned, but he had been asleep. She'd slipped out before he'd woken up.

And he almost wondered if she'd have run for it, set out on foot, if Daryl hadn't been there to take her to wherever it was.

Had she coyote uglied his ass?

Or was she just that anxious to get the hell out of his bed?

He'd shown her a good time. He'd done everything she'd asked him to do, even if some of it had contradicted some of his preconceived notions of what women liked. And she'd liked it too. He'd had her howling more than once over hitting just the right spot, just the right way, at just the right time.

Merle Dixon had shown her ass a good time, there was no denying that.

Yet she hadn't even put up half the squabble some of the women he let go had put up. She hadn't even waited around for him to take her home. She'd just taken off.

"Merle?" Daryl asked after a minute.

Merle looked at him and hummed in question, realizing he'd lost himself for a moment in his contemplation.

"Why you give a damn?" Daryl asked.

Merle hummed again, shaking his head to dismiss it and forced himself to laugh it off.

"Don't," he said. "Don't give a damn."

But he doubted he convinced Daryl, because he wasn't sure he convinced himself.

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Andrea peeled out of her clothes in her apartment, just inside the door, and went straight toward the shower. The worst thing about any "morning after" was the feeling that it left on her skin. She was a fan of the immediate washing off of everything.

A long time ago she'd taught herself that it was almost like some sort of cleansing of sin. Scrubbing herself down with a loofah and an abundant slathering of body wash could make her come out of the bathroom, every time, feeling a little more like a new person and almost entirely unlike the person she'd been when she'd come slinking home.

That person wasn't her.

But then, neither was this one.

Andrea wasn't entirely sure that she knew who she was. She was, in some ways, what she figured someone like Clark Kent might be in real life—minus any of his superhero qualities. She put much of her effort into being more than one person.

She was a semi-respectable lawyer at a small firm by day and she was…

Well, she was something different by night.

It hadn't always been that way, but she felt like it had been that way for so long that she could barely remember what she'd been like before. Sometimes she marveled at her feelings on her own life. Chronologically she wasn't that old, not really, but when her mind thought back on her life? She felt like she'd already lived at least three or four full lifetimes.

In the shower she wasted water and time lazily washing her hair. She washed her body deliberately, focusing on every part of it. She still felt the night she was trying to wash away. The feeling the next day—the feeling of a night that wouldn't quite be gone for some time—that was the sign that it had been a good night. It was a sign that she'd found someone good or, at least, someone good enough at filling her requests.

The bites would heal. She was careful, always, to request them where she wouldn't have to explain them. The bruises too. A stray hickey here or there could be covered with makeup. The slightly cracked lip from teeth brought almost entirely together could be passed off as the severely chapped side effect of a "lip licking" habit that she pretended to have to cover over just such a thing.

She knew her body well enough to know that most of the marks would be gone by the next day. All of them within two or three.

It would be just about the time that she got the feeling like she needed to go back out. She needed to find someone else.

She could have psychoanalyzed herself a half-dozen ways based solely on the little bit of knowledge she picked up in her general psychology course in college—but it didn't really matter. Neurosis, obsession, compulsion, addiction—give it any title you might like. It still boiled down to the same thing.

Loneliness.

But she'd never figured out how to reconcile the two things, no matter how hard she tried—her loneliness and her need to withdraw from those that had first withdrawn from her.

She might have psychoanalyzed herself, but she wasn't really sure that she wanted to know anything more than she already knew. Living in her own head was challenge enough at times without adding to it the bulk of possible labels and descriptions.

And it didn't matter anyway.

She was relatively happy with things just as they were.

By day she did the job she had to do to earn the money that she needed. She earned, as something of a side effect of her job, the limited respect of a very few people. At the same time, she avoided those very same people for the lack of respect they held for her and anyone else who wasn't as "perfect" as they were.

By night she sought out those that she never expected to respect her. And, with them, she found the only companionship that she often felt she had.

But there's was a temporary companionship—one that came with nightfall and left with sunrise.

Clean and dripping water, Andrea stepped out of the shower into the bathroom filled with steam. She cracked the door to the refreshing shock of the cooler air and let the steam bellow out into the apartment building. She scrubbed her body dry and toweled out the excess water from her hair, leaving it only dripping slightly at the ends, before she stepped naked through the apartment and found her phone.

A quick call into her office confirmed what she'd already known. She had no appointments. Not today. None until after noon the next.

She thanked her secretary, hung up, and made herself toast for breakfast before she bothered to go and slip into something comfortable to wear around the house.

_Merle Dixon_.

Andrea was sure she'd seen or heard the name before, but she couldn't quite recall where. Of course, in her line of work, there was a good chance that she'd come across his name if anyone around the office had ever dealt with him. And Merle Dixon seemed like the kind of man who might have, at least once in his life, had at least some kind of dealings with the cops.

Contemplating him over dry toast and water, Andrea couldn't help but think to herself that he'd been surprising at first. She'd expected him to be the kind of man, when he'd crassly introduced himself in the bar, to be rough with her without her request. She could usually pick a man out—pick his style out even before she'd gotten to his bed—but Merle had surprised her a little. More than once she'd had to request a little something "more" from a man that she'd worried, honestly, might have been a little "too much."

Still, if a man was going to err, better he err on the side of the least damage done.

And he'd been a good student. Andrea could imagine that he'd likely never had much use for class on Algebra or Literature, but last night he'd done alright at her own little courses of Chemistry and Biology. He'd left her with the satisfied and all-over tingle without a doubt—and he'd hit every mark she'd set for him.

She almost thought it was a shame that she avoided stepping back in the tracks that she'd already made.


	5. Chapter 5

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here.**

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Two days he'd spent wondering where the hell the blonde went when she'd left his place. Two. That was two more days, exactly, than he ever spent worrying about the whereabouts of a woman.

And he couldn't ask his brother because Daryl wasn't going to talk—and he didn't want him even knowing that he cared, because he didn't know why he cared—and he couldn't ask Carol because she didn't even know unless—and Merle had no idea why he would—Daryl had bothered to share such a trivial and useless piece of information with her.

So two days and it was time to get the damn blonde out of his head.

A good piece was hard to let go of, but it wasn't something Merle thought you should really hold onto either.

After all, you held onto a piece too tight and then there started to be demands. There started to be expectations. Before you knew it? There were things you needed to "talk about" and things that needed to "change" and you were suddenly not so much yourself anymore as you were simply the plaything of the woman who happened to be in possession of the piece you admired.

And though Merle hadn't ever been there before, he imagined that at such a point as that, the piece wasn't even as good as it once seemed and certainly wasn't worth all the extra that came with it.

At least, not for a man like him. He wasn't made that way.

His brother was—after all, Merle knew that he was saving up for a ring and a down payment on a place, which he intended to present to Carol in that order—but Merle and Daryl weren't cut from the same cloth.

So when two days passed and he was still thinking about the blonde that had blown through the place like some kind of tornado, Merle knew it was time to shake things up and remind himself that there was plenty more where that came from.

And it was also Ladies' Night at the Coyote Crossing and Tim had promised him that was a good night to pay a visit to the bar.

As soon as he got there, too, Merle knew that Tim hadn't been lying. The parking lot that had been pretty much empty the first time he'd come to the bar was now overflowing with vehicles. Other trucks, clearly unable or unwilling to pack into the parking lot, had parked on the grass surrounding the parking lot area, expanding the space.

There were even people milling around outside the bar, either not caring or not fearing some kind of charge for being drunk in public by taking their antics outside the small establishment.

Merle was guaranteed to find more than enough women to satisfy any craving he might have tonight.

On his way in the bar, Merle greeted a few of the people he passed—many of them already obviously drunk despite the fact it was a relatively early hour in the bar world—and he eyed a few of the women, but he passed them up because they were already talking to someone else.

Even though Merle had no qualms about taking an eager and willing woman away from whatever man she had been chatting with before his arrival, he didn't usually start his night off like that. Sometimes there was drama that went along with it—given that some men had a flair for getting unnecessarily territorial over a piece that wasn't even theirs to claim yet—and Merle preferred to snatch up the ones that didn't threaten to bring that drama with them.

Besides, as the night wore on, the women who found themselves alone were the ones that were more likely to go home with a man like Merle and know that they shouldn't exactly count on breakfast coming hot to them the next morning.

And they usually didn't care—not so long as they were going home with someone.

Merle elbowed his way through the crowd inside the bar. Between the music playing and the people talking as loudly as they possibly could, each person talking louder than the one before to try to make themselves heard and thus raising the noise level a notch more for someone else, it was damn near impossible to hear a thing.

It was crowded with people everywhere, and Merle glanced around and took some quick inventory of what the place had to offer and made his way toward the bar. He was bumped into more than once, and his feet got stepped on four times in the short walk, but he finally made it to the bar and greeted Tim loudly.

"Whiskey?" Tim asked with a smile.

"Like ya know me," Merle responded. "Big damn crowd tonight. Figured they'd be more chicks an' less damn roosters here, though, if ya know what I mean."

Tim chuckled and brought Merle a shot glass and a half empty bottle of whiskey before he bothered leaning close enough to be heard.

"Problem with ladies' night is it doesn't take long for the men to figure out that's the best night to meet women," Tim said. "So it's pretty much standing room only. You sort of—get your eye on someone? You've gotta move quick. But…if you're looking for something in particular? I'd help a friend out."

Merle drank a shot and wagged his fingers at Tim to indicate that he'd want more. Tim poured the whiskey.

"What's your pleasure? I'll tell you where to look," Tim said. "I know every damn person that comes in this bar. Even new—doesn't take too long to know someone around here."

Merle chuckled and settled on the stool near him for a moment. He turned around, sweeping his eyes over the bar and taking in what there was to see while Tim worked his way down the bar and took care of orders that were waiting for him to get to them.

If you wanted it, it was here tonight. You could just about pick and choose what you wanted—tall, short, skinny, stocky, blonde, brunette, redhead—if you wanted it, it was here. There were even a few "used" models you could invest in if you didn't have the change on hand to sink into one of the racier models.

Merle sucked his teeth and turned back toward the bar. He swallowed down the whiskey that was there and refilled his own shot glass. He'd more than pay for it before the night was over. Tim didn't need to worry about that. Merle might do some shitty things in his life, but he paid his bills.

"So?" Tim asked, returning.

"Got another shot," Merle said. "Lookin' for—what the fuck you got in blondes?"

He chuckled at the sound of the statement and at Tim's own laughter.

"Over there? Near the door? Corner booth?" Tim pointed out. Merle turned and looked in that direction. There were at least six girls over there, all of them about the same age, and all of them about the same in appearance. If Merle didn't know better, he might have assumed they were some kind of sextuplets or something of the like.

But he knew better, and he also knew that some women—and it was a particular breed of them—tended to be cookie cutter with everyone else they were around. Then they travelled in veritable flocks together and squawked about how ridiculous it was when nobody could tell them apart despite the fact that the only thing different about them was their DNA.

"Pffftt…" Merle hissed. "Got a single damn thing in this bar that's legal? I ain't lookin' to ride no kiddie ride, ya catch my damn drift?"

Tim laughed again and leaned over the bar, closer to Merle.

He was a friendly fellow, and Merle excused it, but in many cases he'd suggest to Tim that he got a little too close for comfort.

"Every one of 'em's got a card that says they're legal," Tim said. "I've checked them myself. Twenty one and over."

Merle sucked his teeth.

"And?" He commented. "Seen a card in one of them damn gas stations woulda said I was fuckin' elvis for ninety nine cents. Don't make it so. No damn thank you."

Tim hummed.

"Over there? More your style of blonde?" Tiim asked, gesturing in the other direction and toward the far end of the bar. Merle looked down in that direction, but half a second was all he needed to know that wasn't what the hell he was looking for. That looked like the collection plate for everyone who knew, from the moment they walked in the door, that they weren't leaving with anyone until it was last call—and then it was only going to be those that had drunk themselves blind.

"Hell no," Merle spat.

"Well…if you're not looking for blondes, there's a lady three booths down over there? Keeps ordering drinks—pretty nice looking. Told me she got dumped. Brunette," Tim said.

Merle hummed to himself. That was a winner. That was almost a sure bet. All he had to do, really, was find out what she was drinking—easy enough given his current company—go over, offer her a drink, and then offer to be a sympathetic ear with absolutely no interest in anything besides a little "company" for the night because he was oh so lonely too.

And then? Once she realized what a really nice guy he was? How he didn't have any other thoughts? Wasn't looking for anything at all—even if he meant that differently than she might have taken it the first time she heard it?

Well—few were the wolves who didn't wear well the sheep's wool.

And a brunette? Might just get the taste for a blonde right out of Merle's mouth.

Merle got the brunette's drink order, double checked her location with Tim, and thanked the man for his assistance in the search. Then, he took his shot glass and the rest of the whiskey left in the bottle, and started to elbow his way in her direction.

It was almost a miracle that Merle made it all the way over to that part of the bar without dropping anything or spilling anything. It wasn't his sobriety that was in question, or that would have been fault, but everyone around him was pretty much piss drunk already—and that was some pretty sad commentary given the hour.

Finding the woman was easy enough. She was damn near moping in the booth, one empty glass on the edge of the table, another half empty one in front of her. It was quick to see why she was still available and no one was talking to her. Despite the fact that she was pretty attractive—very attractive, actually, by the bar standards—she had a look on her face that would have run just about any man off.

But Merle Dixon wasn't just any man.

He screwed up his resolve, set himself for the task at hand, and started to finish the last short leg of his journey toward her booth when he heard someone laugh loudly—too loudly—and it drew his attention. He glanced to the side and several feet away, standing at one of the tables that had long since lost its chairs to other people, was Andrea—entertaining or being entertained by, since it was hard to tell, three men.

Merle stopped a moment and watched her. She didn't see him. She wasn't even aware of him. But he watched her.

And when someone stepped wrong and staggered into him, pushing him and almost making him lose his grip on the bottle he was holding in one hand, Merle realized how damn ridiculous this shit was.

That blonde was not one damn bit better than any other bitch in this bar. In fact, she was probably a hell of a lot worse—otherwise, he reasoned, she would've been snatched up by someone by now. She wasn't young enough to say that she was too new to this world to have been snatched up.

She was just some damn blonde that nobody thought was worth keeping around—some blonde destined one day to join the road whores in the corner.

She wasn't worth the time. She wasn't worth his time.

And even if she was the keeping type? Merle didn't want the keeping type.

So he shook his head at his own interest and set forth, even more determined than before, to join the brunette at the booth and to leave with her as his prize, his prey even, for the night.

Because that's all he wanted anyway—with her or anyone else—just the thrill of the night. Just the thrill of the _one night_.


	6. Chapter 6

**AN: Here we are, another little chapter here.**

**This one is a Caryl chapter, but Caryl is the secondary couple for this fic, so that should be expected. If you're not familiar with my writing, you should expect the interaction of other characters throughout the story. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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"Four times! I'm tellin' ya! Four times!" Daryl declared, laughing to himself as he steered his truck down the dirt road that Carol had instructed him to turn down and swerving immediately to miss a pothole he was pretty sure the whole truck could have fallen into.

"He did not," Carol protested.

"He did! Four damn times!" Daryl repeated.

Carol made a face at him, one of pure disbelief and a little humor, and returned to looking out the window of the truck to keep an eye out for the street names she had scribbled on the half crumpled piece of paper that she held in her hand.

"You think I'm lying," Daryl said. "Why do you think I'm lying?"

She turned her head back, rolled her eyes at him, a half smile on her lips, and then turned back to look out the window again.

"Because you are lying," she said. "We're talking about your brother. We've met."

Daryl snorted.

"Why the hell would I like about this?" He said. "I'm as amazed as you are."

He cranked the window down with one hand, swerving around the road so that Carol squealed at the somewhat erratic behavior of the truck, and then he lit a cigarette that he plucked from his pocket. In response, Carol rolled her own window down and leaned her elbow in the open window.

"You're telling me that Merle asked you four times to tell him where this woman lived?" Carol asked.

Daryl hummed.

"Why would he do that?" Carol asked.

Daryl laughed to himself.

"Because he wants to know where the hell she lives! Why else would he do it?" Daryl asked. "He didn't ask in them words, exactly, but he asked."

"OK…but what words did he use?" Carol asked.

"See? Now you think I'm making it up," Daryl said.

"I'm just asking what he asked, that's all," Carol remarked.

Daryl had been with Carol for a while now. He felt, though, like he'd been with her forever—far longer than he'd actually dated her—and he felt that in the nicest way possible.

Growing up with Merle as a brother? Growing up with Merle as really his "point of reference" for how the world worked and how things would go for him in the future? It had painted a pretty bleak picture of domestic life and relationships.

His parents, certainly, had done nothing for making that a nicer picture or a more inspiring one.

So Daryl had thought, really, that he was doomed to a life of hunting down women in bars—women that he didn't particularly even care to have a drink with, less likely spend his life with—for meaningless fucks and hazy and awkward morning afters. And that was only if he was nicer than Merle and didn't just ditch the chick somewhere with nothing more than the occasional five dollar bill left behind so she could call a cab or have some breakfast or something.

But then? Then he'd met Carol.

Sure, he'd met her at a bar, but it was different. She'd seemed out of place there—she'd looked like she felt out of place there. She'd been there getting over a boyfriend that she never should've had to get over in the first place, and for whatever reason, she'd taken a chance on accepting a drink from Daryl.

He had taken her home that night, too. Right to her door where he'd dropped her off and gotten nothing even as much as a goodnight kiss.

But he'd gotten her number, scribbled on a bar napkin, folded meticulously and passed to him during her "goodnight handshake" at the door.

For a good while it drove Merle crazy, too.

It drove him absolutely mad that his little brother—born to be a womanizer in Merle's opinion—had found something he liked and he intended to hold onto it. Merle said it just wasn't "natural," but Daryl figured it felt to him like the most natural thing in the world.

Still, Merle had never gone that way. As far as Daryl knew, not that he really had the time to tag and track all of Merle's conquests—after all, he had a job and other things to do—Merle had never so much as been with the same woman twice. He certainly hadn't gone for thirds if he ever dared to go for seconds.

So it was surprising to Daryl, and apparently seemingly impossible to Carol, that Merle might have inquired after this blonde woman not once, but four times.

"Hell I don't know specifically what words he used, Carol," Daryl commented. He took a moment to draw off his cigarette and try to remember what it was that his brother had said exactly. "Uh—was askin' where she lived right off," he said. "Then—was sayin' something like bet she ain't lived in no upscale place. Ain't lived in no fine community…just like talkin' about her. Then—was askin' if she was close to that bar? You know the one? Got the green roof—over there…just at highway ten?"

"Wolf something?" Carol asked. "Wolf den? Something…wolf something…"

"Wolf…wolf…no…coyote," Daryl said. "Coyote den or some shit like that. Anyway, was asking if she lived somewhere close to there. Then what was there? I don't know—they was like four real times he was asking. Oh! Five, maybe? Did I count four already? 'Cause we passed by a place too that he was like she'd prob'ly live in one of them places…you know the lil' neighborhoods? Matching houses?"

"Oooh!" Carol squealed. "Which ones? Which houses? I like those…did you see the ones they're building out there where they tore down that old shopping center? They're going to be nice. Just like doll houses."

Daryl snorted and Carol looked at him before she sucked in her lips and turned back to look out the window.

"Up there," she said. "Turn on—turn on Pike's Road."

"Where?" Daryl asked, slowing the truck down to almost a crawl. "Here? Turn here?"

"Do you see a road, Daryl?" Carol asked.

Daryl snorted.

"Hell—I don't know. You're leading this parade. I ain't sure what we're on really classifies as a damn road. Thing's like a booby trap for cars," Daryl commented.

"Up there…is that it? That's it. Up there—turn right up there," Carol said.

Daryl saw then what she was talking about, though the road's sign was almost laughable and just a step above being hand painted on a slat of wood. He turned off the dirt road onto the even poorer quality dirt road and flicked the spent butt of his cigarette out of the window of the truck.

"So? What'd you say?" Carol asked.

"About what?" Daryl asked.

She growled at him.

"You can't focus for even ten minutes, can you?" Carol asked, some slight irritation that didn't worry Daryl any in her voice.

He laughed to himself.

"Me? You the one losin' your mind over some doll houses," Daryl commented.

"They aren't doll houses," Carol responded. "They _look_ like doll houses. So what'd you say to him? About where she lived?"

Daryl hummed and chewed at his cuticle. He hoped Carol was keeping an eye out for where they were supposed to be going because he barely even knew where they were and he certainly had no clue where they were going. This was her little excursion.

"Didn't really say nothing," Daryl said. "Just kinda…ya know…just went on about it."

"So you didn't tell him?" Carol asked.

"Nah, why the hell was I gonna tell him?" Daryl asked. "He don't need to know no way and the woman asked me not to tell him. Guess she don't want him knowin'."

"Where does she live?" Carol asked.

"Why do you care?" Daryl responded.

"Why do you care enough not to tell me?" Carol asked, shifting around with some interest in her seat and scooting a little closer to him.

He smirked at her.

"Look the hell out the window and find the next turn," he said. "I don't give a shit. She lives—over on them apartments off Teak."

Carol hummed.

"I think that's our turn up there," she said. "To the left. At the sign? You see it?"

"The road or the sign?" Daryl asked.

She hummed at him.

"I don't see the damn road but the sign's big enough to be a wall," Daryl said with a laugh. "Of course I see the sign. If I couldn't see the sign I don't know why the hell you'd ride with me while I was driving."

She popped him on the shoulder for that one and he laughed. He deserved it. Truth be told, he probably deserved a good deal more than that. He liked giving her a hard time, though, and in return he accepted whatever it was that she wanted to dish out to him. He slowed the truck again because he honestly wasn't sure where the so called road was supposed to be and he didn't want to miss it.

Want to miss it or not, though, he did miss it. He slid right past it once he slammed on the brakes to stop the truck entirely and he was forced to throw the thing in reverse only after he'd examined the drainage ditch and decided that it would do more hell to his alignment than the short cut was worth if he tried to cross it.

Once he was on the final little road—truly a driveway more than a road—he didn't really need instructions.

There was only one place for sale out here at the moment, and that was very likely the place they were going to look at. He had enough sense to be able to drive and follow the painted signs stuck in the ground that instructed any possible buyer on how to arrive at the penny palace of their dreams.

"I think you oughta tell Merle," Carol said, nonchalantly.

"I think he'll figure it out when I'm packing my shit," Daryl said.

She sucked her teeth at him and swatted him once more.

"What? What…oh," Daryl said, realizing that the conversation had stayed in one place while he'd been focusing on what they were doing and where they were going for the moment. "Why? You wanna tell Merle where that woman lives?"

"He obviously wants to know," Carol said. "Maybe he cares. Maybe he liked her."

Daryl hummed to himself.

That idea seemed entirely foreign to him. However, Merle had asked about the woman more than once and that was unlike him too. Usually he forgot everything about them before the bed was cold—name and appearance included except what he kept, wherever in his brain he kept it, to help him make sure that he avoided her again at all costs.

"You think Merle's got something for this blonde?" Daryl asked.

"He might," Carol said.

Daryl laughed to himself at the thought of it.

"Hey!" Carol barked. He slowed the truck, thinking he'd misread the signs. He realized, though, when she continued speaking that he hadn't. "I know a certain Dixon boy that was happy to know where I lived."

"Yeah, well, that's different," Daryl said. "I'm a lot different than Merle."

"You are," Carol said. "But it doesn't mean we can't have hope for Merle."

Daryl hummed.

"And she seemed a lot different than you," he pointed out. "Besides—would you really wanna do that to this woman you don't even know? Put Merle on her trail?"

Daryl pulled to a stop in front of the place that was for sale and put the truck in park. He looked around, saw that the person showing them the house wasn't there yet, and pulled out a cigarette to light it and smoke it before the person got there. He had no idea, after all, how long something like this might take.

"Maybe she went home with him because she was interested in him," Carol said.

"She ain't wanted him to know where she lived," Daryl countered.

"Maybe she didn't know she wanted him to know," Carol said, cocking an eyebrow at him.

He chuckled to himself and shook his head. When she got her mind set on something, Carol was like a dog with a bone. He liked it—goodness knows he liked it—and he was glad that she'd gotten her mind set on him that way too, but he could also recognize when he was beat.

"I ain't telling him," Daryl said. "Because I promised that woman I weren't gonna tell him where she lived. And you know you'd be pissed if you knowed I broke a promise to someone like that. So I ain't tellin' him."

Carol hummed and then opened the truck door in a hurry at the sight of the approaching SUV pulling toward them from the other side of the lot.

"Look! There's Mr. Williams—let's go," she said. She didn't wait for him to respond before she slid out of her seat, her feet finding the ground. Daryl took a moment to finish what he could of the cigarette he'd started and get out of his seatbelt. "And I didn't promise her anything," Carol announced, slamming the truck door before she started, not waiting on Daryl at the moment, toward the SUV where the man that had promised to meet them was just starting to get out.


	7. Chapter 7

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. Hopefully another to come soon. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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_Her name was Andrea. Andrea—with no last name. Like Cher. Like Madonna. Nothing more than just simple, plain Andrea. And she lived off Teak. There were two brick apartment buildings, one in front of the other, a walkway leading between them out to a parking lot, that sat like they were greeting each other "hello" all the time._

Not that Merle cared, really. Because he didn't.

Since he'd seen her? He'd sniffed up two other women and took them to the Red-Top Motel just off the highway—just leading out of town. It wasn't two miles from the Coyote Crossing.

They weren't very good, but they'd been fine for a night. And that didn't have a single damn thing to do with Andrea. It was simply their downfall.

He could've picked her up either of those times. Both times he'd seen her—sniffing around the other men at the bar—and both times he could've picked her up if he'd wanted to put the effort into drawing her attention away from other men.

But he hadn't, because he didn't care.

It just so happened that tonight it was a Tuesday. And Merle didn't have shit to do so he'd wandered down to the bar where it just so happened that there wasn't a lot happening. The bar, after all, wasn't that busy on a Tuesday. There was just Tim working it and a couple of diehards because nobody came out on a Tuesday night.

Except, of course, for Merle.

And Andrea.

Merle was already sipping whiskey and smoking his second cigarette by the time the blonde came through the door. He glanced back to see her when she entered—he'd looked back when every person had come in, drawn by the sound of the door, and then he'd turned his attention back to staring at the dirty mirror on the other wall and contemplating the burning end of his cigarette.

She walked in like she owned the place. She walked in like that kind of woman who thought that everybody ought to pay her attention when she graced their presence. It didn't matter that they did, it was still presumptuous that she should come through the door that way.

Her heels clicked on the floor the whole way to the bar, signaling her approach with every step.

And she sat down, five stools away from Merle without saying a word and without so much as looking in his direction. It was like she wasn't even aware of his existence. It was like she couldn't see him.

Of course, he didn't say shit to her either.

She could've at least smiled or nodded her head in his direction. Instead she just drummed a hand on the bar to get Tim's attention and ordered a drink.

_Rum and Coke._

Merle watched her drink it—using the stirring stick as a straw no less—and glance around the bar like she was surveying the landscape.

_She'd probably fucked every piece of ass in here tonight._

But when her drink ran low and she had no other prospects to offer a fresh one, Merle got Tim's attention and signaled to him. When he came over, Merle made a loud announcement—loud enough for her to hear it, and made sure that he made himself available for eye contact.

"Lady needs another rum an' coke," Merle said.

"Uh—Diet Coke," Andrea said quickly to Tim.

Tim nodded and excused himself to make the drink and Merle smirked at Andrea across the distance. He hummed.

"Diet Coke?" He asked. "Mmm—don't need no more sugar, Sugar?"

She smiled at that. Just a slight curve of her lips. One eyebrow raised slightly. Merle could tell he already had her on the hook. If he decided he wanted her? He had her. If he decided he didn't?

It was all up to him. But—there was nobody else in the bar worth a second look.

And maybe he had a certain taste in his mouth.

He patted the stool next to him.

"Why don't'cha come right on over here?" He asked. "Pull up a stool next to ole Merle?"

She looked around again like she was actually scanning the bar for better prospects, but then she got up and moved down the line of stools to bring herself closer to him. She settled in next to him and he leaned just a little closer to her—he remembered her perfume.

He thanked Tim when the man brought the drink and put it in front of her and he watched a moment as she toyed with the stirring stick-turned straw. She was making a show of drinking from it. Merle wasn't stupid. There wasn't a trick in the book he didn't know—and that? It was meant only to make him focus on her lips—to imagine what else they might be wrapped around if he played his cards right.

If she played her cards right, he might not leave her sitting on a bar stool with no other prospects.

"What's got you drinkin' in here on a Tuesday?" Merle asked.

"Work," Andrea said.

"Oh?" Merle responded. "What kinda work you do?"

Andrea hummed.

"Like you care," she responded.

"Like you gonna tell me any damn way," Merle said with a snort.

He did care. He didn't want to care, but he was curious. What did the blonde do? What made it possible for her to be out drinking at least three nights a week? He could assume she went home with someone every time that she went out drinking—but he couldn't be positive. He knew, though, that she went home with people on Tuesdays. That's when the hell she'd gone home with him.

"Doesn't matter," Andrea said. "Off tomorrow."

Merle hummed.

"Andrea—with no damn last name," Merle mused out loud. "Don't have to work at her job on a Wednesday."

"What do you do, Merle Dixon?" Andrea asked.

"Whole lotta nothing," Merle responded.

She shifted a little on her stool.

"Little of this, little of that," Merle said. "Do whatever the hell needs doing. Something of a handy man, you could say."

He laughed to himself.

"Whatever you got that's broke? I can—uh—prob'ly help you out with that shit," he said.

Andrea hummed at him.

"Except—I don't have anything that's broke," she said.

"I know why you here," Merle said. "You—got you a taste of me and you couldn't stay away."

She snorted.

"You're feeling pretty damn cocky," she commented. "For your information? I hardly ever work on Wednesdays. I'm in here nearly every Tuesday."

"I stand corrected," Merle said. "What the hell you do?"

Andrea cleared her throat.

"It doesn't matter," she said.

"You don't work too damn often," Merle said.

"I work nearly every day," she responded.

"Go in drunk? Wearin' what'cha was wearin' the night before?" Merle asked.

Andrea scoffed at him and he realized that, without him meaning to let it do so at all, the conversation had taken an odd turn. She responded, though, before he could figure out how to backtrack his way out of it.

"For your information," Andrea said, "I never get _drunk_ on a night before I work. I may have a drink or two—but that hardly means I'm drunk. And it's none of your business who or what I do—but I'm good at my job."

Merle immediately realized he was at fault. And he was sorry. It really wasn't any of his business. Normally he wouldn't care at all. Not even he was sure exactly why there was a thorn in his ass over the nocturnal practices of the blonde.

He cleared his throat.

"Fuckin' with ya," he said in lieu of an apology—those apologies were never good things with Merle.

"You know—every night that you say you see me in here?" Andrea said in response. "It means you're in here too."

"I know how the hell to hold my liquor. Besides—don't nobody give two shits if I'm hung over—long as I get the job done," Merle responded.

Now that she'd mentioned it, though, Merle noticed that Andrea wasn't drinking her second drink with the same enthusiasm with which she'd drank the first.

Of course, it may be because he'd brought it to her attention.

He took a cigarette out of his pack that was resting on the bar and lit it. Then he offered it to her. She took it and he lit another for himself.

"Lemme go at this shit again," Merle said. "You—uh—lookin' for some company tonight? Andrea with no last name?"

Andrea stared at the bar a moment, seemed to consider it, and then she looked back at him.

"I might be," she said.

He chuckled. Playing hard to get. That was fine. Nothing that was too damn easy to get was really worth the having.

"Tim—lady's lookin' mighty damn thirsty," Merle said. "Get another over here? And—I could use another damn bottle. This one's spent."

Tim complied and brought the drink and Andrea touched the top of her glass with her fingertip.

"I haven't finished this one yet," she said.

"But you will," Merle said. "And the third—and then? Might want a change of ambiance? Get the hell outta this shit joint."

Andrea's lips barely curled into a smile.

"Where were you thinking about going?" Andrea asked.

Merle sucked his teeth. This was where it might get tricky. He had a feeling that Andrea would know immediately what he was doing if he suggested some motel. He might know every trick in the book, but she was no stranger to them either.

"You done been to my place, Sugar," Merle said. "So—how's about you show me where the hell you hang your hat?"

"You showed me yours? Now I'll show you mine?" Andrea responded.

Merle hummed and nodded.

"I don't think so," Andrea said. "What about—back to your place? You had some pretty nice—sheets—if I remember?"

Merle shook his head.

"Damn," he commented. "You scared I'ma fuckin' rob your ass or some shit? Tell ya what. You can—you can frisk me. When I come an' when I'm leavin'."

He chuckled to himself.

"You want to? Let'cha strip search me," he said, winking at her. "Rough me up a little if it's ya damn pleasure."

He lowered his voice.

"An'—uh—I remember correctly? That shit is your pleasure," he added.

Andrea looked taken aback for just a moment and he saw her eyes dart quickly around. It wasn't as if anyone was around them that gave a shit. But it did make Merle wonder for a moment what she was like with the other assholes she took home.

Maybe she reserved something of herself? Or maybe they just weren't up for the challenge.

He smiled at her and licked his lips.

"Drink up?" He said.

Andrea sighed and focused on what was left of her cigarette before she snubbed it out and spoke to him.

"Why do you want to go back to my place?" She asked.

Merle smirked at her.

"Everybody knows—everybody's more comfortable in they own damn house. Maybe—I just wanna know what the hell you like when you're at home?" Merle offered.

Andrea swallowed visibly. She glanced around again.

"If we go back to my place? You leave when I tell you to leave," Andrea said. "My place. My rules."

Merle raised his eyebrows at her.

"Lady gets what the lady wants," Merle said. "And when the lady gets what the hell she wants? This bastard might get what the hell he wants too."

"I don't know," Andrea responded. "That's a pretty big gamble."

"Just call me Maverick, Sugar," Merle said. "Drink ya drinks—we got better damn places to be."


	8. Chapter 8

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here.**

**Reminder to anyone who has forgotten. There is some "violence" to the kinks depicted in the story, but it should also be explicitly clear that everything that happens is consensual. It's agreed upon between them and shouldn't be read as anything else. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think!**

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Andrea's hands weren't exactly shaking, as she made her way down the walkway toward her apartment, but it wasn't easy to get a grasp on her keys and pick through—blindly because the landlord had never bothered to fix the outside light when it had burned out two weeks before—to find the one to her door.

To say she was nervous would have been an overstatement—out of line even—because she feared nothing about the encounter that she and Merle had chatted up in the bar. But she was a little uneasy. It was simply that it had nothing to do with Merle and it had everything to do with her apartment.

Andrea didn't take men back to her apartment. That was really just a general rule. At least, she didn't take the men back to her apartment that she met on her nocturnal trips to hunt someone up at a bar.

The Andrea that frequented Coyote Crossing and the Andrea that resided in her apartment were—if not entirely—mostly two different people.

In fact, even as she unlocked the door with Merle right behind her—the smell of whiskey on his breath perceptible to her even now—she was asking herself why she'd agreed to this at all.

"I think you should know," she somewhat stammered out as she got the door unlocked and pushed it open, "that—my apartment..."

She never finished, though. Merle pushed her the rest of the way in the door and with a move that she would have doubted he could perform again, closed the door and swiftly turned her so that her back was against her own door and his lips were on hers before she could even wrap her mind around what was happening.

The taste of sour whiskey took over her senses for a moment and that faded into the desire that she'd felt before—the desire that had led her to bring this man back to her apartment.

He was a hard type of man to find. Not because he had any special skill or because he was particularly handsome or erudite. He was a hard type of man to find because she knew that she could request from him just what she wanted—and she would get that.

Other men? It was risky to be into the things that turned her on the most. One type of man cowered away from her requests—very nearly beat themselves out the door to get away from what they saw as some kind of frightening perversion on her part. And another type? Another, given permission for some of the acts that she requested, misread that permission—and forgot that even she had boundaries.

So Merle Dixon? A man that neither cowered from her requests nor took them to the extreme? A man that stopped when she requested it but gave her every bit that she begged for? He was a harder breed to find than some might think.

And Andrea desired him in a way that she wouldn't have wanted to explain to anyone who knew the Andrea that inhabited her apartment.

When Merle broke the hard kiss, he pulled entirely away from her—enough to have her seeking him out subconsciously in the dark—and chuckled.

"Damn sugar," he commented. "You didn't pay the damn electric bill? Can't see shit."

Andrea reached around, the same nervous catch that she'd felt outside returning, and found the light switch. She flicked it and shed light on the apartment.

Then she tried to read Merle's face as he looked around.

Her apartment was neat. It was sparsely furnished. She didn't have a great deal of pictures or knick knacks. There weren't tons of souvenirs from her life. If he'd explored it carefully? He might have found a few books with her name written in the cover that would've given away more of who she was—who she hid back from him. He might have guessed, from the subject matter of those books, how she spent the work hours she drank to forget. He'd have seen the one picture she had—just one—of her and her little sister the last time they'd tried to make some connection with each other.

But he wouldn't have found too much more there. There wasn't much more to find.

Still, clean and dull and boring—her apartment, she felt, wasn't much of a reflection of the woman that she was when the sun dropped down to sleep and she stalked out the door in search of _something_.

Merle hummed to himself, but he didn't say anything about the apartment and her decorating choices.

"Got somethin' to drink?" He asked.

Andrea nodded and moved away from him to the kitchen area of her "space". She didn't ask what he wanted. She served him whiskey. She served herself whiskey and water. He didn't seem to notice the difference between the drinks, though, because he was too busy looking here and there around him.

"This place got a bedroom?" He asked, downing the whiskey she'd given him in one long gulp.

"Where the hell else would I sleep?" Andrea asked.

"Don't look like you do shit here," Merle commented. "Figured you might not sleep neither."

The comment stung in a strange sort of way.

"Through there," Andrea said, gesturing with her head. "But—I don't think I was fair with you. I don't think—it's what you expected."

Merle looked at her somewhat puzzled. Then he sucked his teeth.

"Got a damn bed in it?" He asked.

Andrea nodded.

"You about to be naked in the damn thing?" He asked.

Andrea bit her lip, slightly amused by the question, and nodded her head once more.

"That's all the hell I was expecting," Merle commented, moving to help himself to another drink. He sucked his teeth. "I don't give a damn what color you paint your walls—or—don't paint 'em. And I don't give one hot damn what the hell kinda frilly ass sheets I'm about to dirty up—or whatever you're fuckin' worried I'ma lose my shit over."

Andrea sucked her lip further in to remove the budding smile and finished her drink in the time it took him to finish two.

"Then why the hell are we out here talking?" Andrea asked.

Merle put the glass he was using next to hers.

"Was about to ask you the same damn thing," Merle said.

"Do you have a—preferred safety word?" Andrea asked.

He furrowed his brow.

"Stop usually does that shit for me," he remarked. They'd had this discussion before. Clearly it hadn't stuck with him—at least not entirely. But Andrea, all of a sudden, realized how patient she could really be.

"Stop isn't good," she said. "Because stop, sometimes, means keep going. At least—in bed and at red lights."

Merle chuckled and looked around for inspiration.

"Window," he said after a moment. "Unless—your ass scream out window a whole damn lot?"

Andrea smirked and shook her head. Then she started the short walk to the bedroom. He followed her without question.

She did just enough of a strip tease for him to let him enjoy the show—to let him get something out of watching her unwind herself from the fabric she'd put on to paint a pretty picture for him—but she didn't dawdle about it. There was no doubt that he wanted what she was going to give him. And when he stripped out of his clothes, with much less pomp and circumstance than even she had used, it was even more evident that he was expecting it.

In a move that would have normally made her cringe, Merle stood there stroking himself while he waited for her to burrow condoms out of her nightstand—the box from which she'd taken the ones that were currently in her purse because she'd never anticipated returning here with someone—and then he put one on without words.

She let him position her—not minding whatever he might choose at the moment—on the bed, and she closed her eyes for just a moment against the feeling of him teasing her with one hand while he harassed her breast with the other, his face leaned against her back.

"What's your pleasure?" He growled, low, in her ear.

She hummed.

"I don't care," she said honestly. "Just—stop teasing me until—I want you in...hard and fast. All at once. Don't fuck around."

He smirked.

In an act of disobedience, she felt him begging entrance elsewhere and she hissed at him.

"Window, asshole," she spat at him.

He chuckled.

He rocked her whole body forward, earning another his from her of a different nature, as he did what she'd requested and thrust himself fully inside her, hard and fast, without warning. He held himself close to her body for a moment, pressed against her back, and spoke near her ear without moving.

"Bitch like you? Likes it rough? But you tell me there ain't no chance of—testin' out that ass?" Merle mused.

"Didn't say there wasn't a chance," Andrea replied. "Just said not right now. Are you going to fuck me? Or are you going home?"

He chuckled and slapped her ass hard enough that she was sure there would be a mark.

"My pleasure, darlin'," he remarked. "Yours too."

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A librarian. A schoolteacher. Some upstanding citizen of the community—some boring woman who would never even entertain more than the missionary position—that's who the hell lived in this apartment. At least, when Merle got up to go and get himself a drink—and to bring one back to her—that's what he thought.

She wasn't what she appeared to be. And it gave him a strange sort of feeling—it gave him a different sort of view on a woman who was oddly interesting to him—even if he wasn't entirely sure why.

Still—the woman he'd left lying in the bed hadn't seemed to be a librarian or a schoolteacher. He wouldn't have dared try to say what she was.

He normally would have lit out of there, as fast as he could. But—for some reason, he was compelled not to at the moment.

He'd given it to her as good as she wanted, and he was exhausted. But—even though he'd followed her requests, along with a few of his own that he'd made and she'd given the go ahead on—he felt oddly guilty about what he'd done. She'd only barked window out, hoarsely, at him a time or two—but he didn't feel right just tipping his proverbial hat to her and letting himself out the door.

So he brought her the drink. And he went to the bathroom and made like he was only going to piss, but while he was there he wet a rag with cool water and brought it back. She was either half asleep or was making like she was so he moved her body around himself. And for the first time in his life, Merle Dixon set about washing up the woman that he'd just fucked—all the while asking himself why the hell he was doing it.

She moaned at him and sat up to look at him.

"What are you doing?" She asked with the same sound in her voice of someone who had been asleep for at least a little while.

"Shut up," Merle responded, not really having an answer to give.

He returned to the bathroom, washed out the rag that he'd used, and then returned with it once more. He thought about it a moment—wondered if it was a decent thing to do—and then shrugged to himself before he set about wiping at her eyes. Whether or not she realized it, some of what she requested didn't make her the prettiest picture ever. She might not know it, but her mascara leaked trails down her face, among other things, that showed that it was more than she bargained for at times.

He didn't say anything, though, he just mopped at the paint on her face and threw the rag on the nightstand near him when he was done.

She looked at him, but she didn't say anything for the moment. She was shutting up—just like he'd told her to do. The whole evening had been about giving and taking commands. She was doing her part.

Merle thought to himself—briefly before he shook it out of his head—that she looked better with the paint washed off altogether. But she did look different. And he wasn't as sure if the woman without the paint looked like the same kind of woman that he would've comfortably fucked in the same way that he'd gladly fucked the woman wearing so many coats of it. So, maybe, that's why she chose to lay it on as thick as she did.

"It's late," Merle said, the words sticking in his throat as he continued because his tongue was so entirely unused to forming them—they came out almost like failed attempts to pronounce some unknown language, "so I'ma just—crash here. Run out in the morning."

And, to his surprise—and even more so because he accepted the invitation—Andrea's only response was to move herself enough to flick the crumpled and discarded blanket partially on top of her body and to lift it as thought to invite him under it and beside her.

And he came, for the first time ever, to voluntarily curl his body against a woman's with the intention to sleep—fixing, himself, the blanket over them so that it covered them both for the night.


	9. Chapter 9

**AN: Here we are, another chapter here. **

**Thank you to those of you who are reading and reviewing. I know it's not a popular pairing, but I'm glad to see that at least some people enjoy Mandrea! **

**I hope you enjoy the chapter! Let me know what you think! **

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Andrea woke up slowly. It took her a few minutes to come into consciousness. Her immediate realization, upon her brain really beginning to wake, was that she was thirsty enough to drink a bathtub full of water.

The second was that, if she moved at all, she was starkly aware of aches and pains in her body—and this time it wasn't the traditional headache of having had too much to drink.

The third, and probably the most surprising to her newly waking mind, was that she wasn't alone in her bed.

Andrea didn't often bring men to her apartment. As a result, she really never woke up with anyone in her bed. But this morning, she did. And she remembered, immediately, that Merle had stayed the night before—even if she wasn't entirely sure she remembered his reason why, and she wasn't entirely sure why she'd agreed to it.

She didn't know what the hour might be, but given the fact that she'd woken up naturally and feeling pretty well rested, she knew it couldn't be early. Clearly Merle didn't have to go to work, or he had definitely missed his hour to go.

Still, as long as he was here...

Andrea wasn't getting out of the bed without waking him, and now there was no chance that he'd leave without waking her. One way or another the two of them were going to have to have some kind of awkward "morning after" encounter. The least Andrea could do was try to make it a pleasant one—one that was less awkward than it could be.

Asleep, his short-cropped curly hair standing up in all directions, Merle didn't look like the man he looked like at the bar.

Of course, Andrea wasn't entirely sure he _was_ the man he pretended to be at the bar.

She hadn't really had much to drink the night before, and as she looked at him, she retraced the events of the previous night in her mind. She followed them back, as well as she could, and thought about them.

Merle Dixon was an arrogant man. He was cocky and self-assured. He thought he was a god among men. He could be foul-mouthed, abrasive, and rude. He was hard and uncaring.

At least, that's what he wanted people to believe—at the bar.

Andrea was pretty good at reading people, though. Granted, she'd gotten that way through years of trial and error—years of reading men wrong and then later having her eyes opened to who they really were—but she'd learned from her past mistakes. It didn't mean, of course, that she couldn't be fooled, but it meant that she was always trying to read people—especially those she chose to let into her life for more than the span of a few hours.

And by now? She'd let Merle into her bed, even if it was only figuratively speaking to some degree, twice. And she'd seen him much more. She pretended she didn't know he'd been watching her at Coyote Crossing, but she knew.

Sometimes the most arrogant, cocky, self-assured men were the least like that. Usually? Those were the damaged and hurt little boys. The problem, of course, was knowing what was under that—because sometimes it was terrifying what happened to that little boy when his cover was stripped away. And sometimes? It was simply heartbreaking.

The only glance that Andrea had, so far, of who was under the mask that Merle Dixon wore had come when he'd hesitated, more than once, to do something she'd asked of him. He hesitated because he didn't want to hurt her.

Some of the little boys wanted nothing more than to hurt—sometimes even beyond what she allowed.

Andrea knew about masks.

She moved enough in the bed to roll her body so that she could use her elbows to push her up. She pushed herself up and kissed the stubbled face of the man who had spent the night with her. The man that was still sleeping, probably unaware of where he was.

He stirred very little. Andrea placed her hand, open palmed, on his chest and rubbed her fingers through the hair there. She barely teased his nipples with her fingertips. She kissed his face again. This time she held it a little longer, her lips prickled by the hair.

He stirred more this time and she smiled to herself.

It was almost as if he could hear her smile, because he immediately stirred again. He turned his head, looked at her with the clouded over look of sleep in his eyes, and then she saw as he slowly started to recognize her and slowly started to piece together what was going on.

He didn't smile, but he didn't look angry either.

Andrea did offer him a smile, though it wasn't much more than a slight movement of her lips. She hummed at him.

"I thought—you might want a wake up call?" She said.

He grunted at her in question. He was still waking up.

She slid her hand down his body, biting her lip to keep the smile away as she did, and watched his face to see what he might say or do—to see if he might not want what she was offering.

When she wrapped her fingers around him, she found that part of him was at least interested in her proposal. He only groaned in response to the touch.

So she took her test a step farther and moved to sit up, rolling the blanket back as she did to reveal him to herself.

He had scars in various places on his body. She wasn't asking about them. And he wasn't telling, but he didn't flinch when she ran her fingers across them either.

He didn't flinch when she kissed him except for the occasional muscle jump that was uncontrollable.

When she moved herself down the bed enough, though, to finally tease him with her tongue, running it down the length of him, he sat up enough to bring his hands under her arms like he might be making a move to pick up a small child.

She looked at him.

"I'm sorry," she said. "I thought..."

He grunted again.

"Come on up here," he said, the words the first that he'd bothered to mutter as of yet.

Andrea moved to come back to where she'd been, but this time she held herself into a position where she could loom over him.

He tangled his hands roughly in her curls—by choice or by accident it was hard to tell—and pulled her down to him, coming up slightly to meet her, until she brought their lips together.

The kiss, in comparison to some the night before—kisses that had been almost savage—was light and gentle and close mouthed. But it was nice.

Andrea pulled away, though now she felt more confused than ever.

"Did you want...?" She asked.

"Crawl on up here," Merle said with a smirk. "Ain't no reason we can't have a damn good time together. Mornin' is shot to shit anyway."

Andrea groaned and shook her head.

"I'm not sure I—really feel up to it," she said. She shook her head again. "Still—recovering? From last night. Just taking it easy this morning. But—my offer? It still stands. Otherwise? I'm feeling generous—I'll make breakfast."

He stared at her. His eyes widened slightly, but then they returned to normal. He didn't say anything, though, for long enough that Andrea almost thought she might need to repeat the whole thing for him—like he'd fallen asleep just long enough to miss it. Finally, though, he did speak.

"I'll take the breakfast," he said. "But—uh—you don't feel up to it?"

Andrea shook her head.

He hummed.

"What if—we was to do something different?" He asked. "Play it my way for once? You don't like it—still got'cha damn windows to use whenever the hell you want 'em."

He laughed in his throat.

"Unless you throwin' my ass outta one," he added.

Andrea smiled.

"Your way?" She asked, raising her eyebrows at him.

He hummed again, but he moved this time and she followed his lead, letting him rise from his spot enough to take control of the situation. He pushed at her and she followed the nudges that he gave her, allowing herself to be maneuvered until she was on her back, head resting on the pillow, below him.

He kissed her. This time, the kiss fell somewhere in between the soft kiss of the morning and the more animalistic ones of the night before. And then he continued with the kisses—soft like the ones she'd planted on his body—as he moved down hers. He stopped kissing her only when he wrapped his mouth around one of her nipples and teased it to the point that she, involuntarily, lifted herself slightly off of the mattress. When he was done, he leaned up and smiled at her.

"Lil' slower," he said. "Take it easy—on account of the recuperating? Then—I hope to hell you make some decent ass pancakes 'fore I bust the hell outta this place."

Andrea smiled at him, but she only responded by reaching her hands around him as best she could and pulling him back toward her with the flexing of her fingertips.

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Merle ate breakfast in an apartment that belonged to someone—but he had a difficult time, still, believing that it belonged to Andrea. At least, he had a hard time believing that it belonged to the Andrea that he'd come there with.

The Andrea that had made the pancakes, though? The Andrea that ate quietly across the table from him in cotton pajama shorts, with no make up, and kept peeking at him from time to time and smiling softly when she noticed him noticing her?

He could almost believe that the apartment belonged to her.

Merle was not accustomed, though, to eating breakfast with any woman besides his mother—the three or so times he could ever recall doing such a thing—and the little woman that was bound ass and determined to drag his baby brother to a wedding chapel.

He was certainly not accustomed to eating breakfast with a woman like Andrea. Neither one of them.

And what was even more confusing to Merle, was that he didn't feel like he would've imagined he'd felt if anyone would've asked him how this scenario might go. He didn't feel the kind of awkward with her that he thought he would. He knew that he would leave when the meal was done, but he didn't feel the urgency to bolt from the apartment before he'd finished eating.

He didn't feel what he'd feared feeling every time he'd left some woman with a twenty dollar bill as a thank you note in some motel somewhere.

And, worse than that? He wasn't sure which of the Andreas he liked better—as though there were really two at all.

"Andrea With-No-Last-Name," Merle said, breaking the strange silence they'd guarded through breakfast just as he'd finally gotten up to go and been escorted to the door by the vixen-turned-girl-next-door, "you—gonna tell me where the hell you work?"

Andrea shook her head. Merle nodded his.

He smiled at her.

"Gonna tell me what the hell your last damn name is? Now that I know where your palace is?" Merle asked.

"Some things," Andrea said, "are just better left unknown."

She smiled and he chuckled.

"Hard damn nut to crack," he commented. "I don't believe there's too damn much about you I don't know by now. Seen just about all the hell you got to show."

She renewed her smile and shook her head.

"No," she said. That was all that she said. And, still, Merle felt like it was probably true. He knew what the hell her body looked like—in all states of dress and undress—but that was about the extent of it besides a nickel's worth of extra information.

He cleared his throat, suddenly feeling the awkward he'd feared earlier start to come upon him, and he nodded at her.

"Thanks," he said. "Breakfast and..."

She nodded and stepped back from the door frame, her hand on the door to shut it, signaling that it was time for him to go.

He resisted asking the question that popped into his mind to ask—a question he'd never asked before to any woman—about when he might see her again.

Instead, he simply tossed out a "see ya around" and turned to leave, not looking back when the door to the apartment closed. He made it to the stairs before he turned back. He committed the number to memory. Lucky number 13.

And when he got downstairs, he never meant to stop before he got to his truck, but he did stop. He stopped right by the mailboxes that were lined up like little soldiers against one wall.

Lucky number 13.

_Harrison._


	10. Chapter 10

**AN: Here we go, another chapter here. **

**I hope you enjoy! Let me know what you think! **

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Things from the past always seemed to bubble up. Nothing ever seemed to stay put where anyone had left it. Everything that ever happened came with an inconvenient "to be continued" label and then, at the worst possible time, there was a reminder that it had happened.

Carol had never married Ed Peletier. She'd dated him too long, though. She'd dated him long enough that he'd started talking about the more serious things, like marriage, and had started to believe that they would happen. For a while, Carol had also believed they might happen. It was the realization, though, that if she said yes to him, she would be spending the rest of her life with him, that had made her never say yes.

She'd never said yes to marriage, but now she remembered that she'd said yes to a few things. They were legal technicalities. She'd signed off on a few purchases that Ed had made. She'd given her name as a "second" on some things and then she'd entirely forgotten about it. Ed had paid the bills for everything that she'd signed off on and she'd essentially forgotten ever having put pen to paper.

Except she was reminded of it when they were running some paperwork to negotiate with Carol and Daryl about the house that they were trying to buy. Fortunately, Mr. Williams was married to a lawyer and, also fortunately, she'd agreed to help them out. It wasn't a big deal, she'd assured Carol on the phone. It wouldn't take much to clear things up. It was just a technicality of a few things that had been done a little differently than they should have and she could put it straight in a matter of days if Carol brought her some paperwork.

It had taken Carol two days to even find what she needed. She'd gathered it up, though, and she'd called Mrs. Williams—who insisted on being called Michonne—at the office and she'd made an appointment with her.

Standing in the small waiting room of the law office, Carol looked around for anyone who might take her name or even tell Michonne that she was there. The waiting room and reception area, though, was abandoned at this hour. The offices, if Carol was guessing blindly about the layout of the building, were somewhere down a little hallway. She could hear, from somewhere, the sound of a machine whirring down that same little hall. But she didn't know if she should just go down there, unannounced, and interrupt whatever Michonne was doing.

Carol was searching around for a bell, or at least a plaque that might give her some instructions of what to do if she needed assistance and there was none being provided, when a blonde woman came walking around the corner from the office and almost ran right into her. The woman looked utterly surprised, at first, to see Carol standing there and then her features softened and ran into a smile.

"Can I help you?" She asked.

"I have an appointment with Michonne Williams," Carol said.

The woman nodded.

"Her office is right down here," the woman said, still not mentioning a name or anything else that might tell Carol with whom she was speaking. "I'll show you."

Carol simply thanked her for her offered assistance and followed the blonde back down the hallway from which she'd come—whatever she'd come for temporarily forgotten—and she waited while the woman knocked at one of the doors and then opened it, waving Carol inside with a final smile.

Inside, Carol met Michonne Williams and was greeted with a warm smile and a strong handshake before she was offered one of the small leather chairs to sit in while Michonne leafed through the pages that she'd asked Carol to dig up.

"I didn't even remember all of this," Carol explained, feeling the need to fill the silence.

"I hear that more than you think," Michonne said, not looking up from what she was doing.

"We really want to buy the house," Carol said. "We're—well—maybe it's time, you know? Settle down. Think about a family. Really think about it."

Michonne hummed, nodded, and smiled at the papers because she didn't stop to look up and offer Carol the smile.

Carol glanced around the office. There were some pictures. She identified Mr. Williams—Tyreese—from the photos and some pictures of small girls.

"The house is very nice," Carol said. "Small, but big enough for the two of us and a child. Maybe two."

"People don't need as much space as they think," Michonne said, turning herself toward her computer and doing something there for a moment. "We used to have a bigger house. We're probably the only people that bought something smaller because we felt like there was too much distance between us in the one that we had. There was too much room to be away from each other."

Carol hummed.

"Daryl and I haven't lived together yet," she gave as an explanation. "But—my place is really small and he lives with his brother."

Michonne made a noise.

"The in-laws," she said.

Carol laughed to herself.

"Merle grows on you," Carol said.

"So do fungi," Michonne said. "It doesn't necessarily mean you like it."

Carol laughed and nodded, though she was really getting used to Merle. He was an acquired taste, but after a while it was just easier to accept that he was who he was. He wasn't going to change.

Except, lately, he'd been doing some changing. It was hard to explain, really, what it was. There was something different about him, though. Carol and Daryl had both agreed not to say anything about it, though, and not to point it out. They were afraid that letting him know that he was changing would make Merle rally against whatever it was and send him regressing back into what he had been. It was better to let things with Merle happen organically and not to call attention to them.

"You really think you can clear this up?" Carol asked. "I never intended to marry Ed. I mean—for a while? I thought I did. But he wasn't really the kind of man I wanted to marry. I just realized that I didn't want to spend the rest of my life with him."

"Better to realize it before you get married," Michonne said. She stopped what she was doing and looked at Carol. "And don't worry about it. You don't owe me an explanation. It's just a technicality and I know that I can get it fixed. It's almost taken care of now. I just need to make a few phone calls and the whole thing will be cleared up. Before you know it? You and—what was your fiancé's name?"

"Boyfriend," Carol corrected quickly. "He hasn't asked me to marry him. We're just—thinking ahead. Maybe too far ahead."

Michonne smiled.

"I didn't mean anything by it," she said.

"Daryl," Carol offered. "Daryl Dixon."

Michonne nodded to accept the name.

"Before you and Daryl know it, you'll be buying a house and moving ahead with your lives," Michonne said. Her tone of voice was soothing. Everything she said, honestly, she said with such assuredness that Carol imagined she made a great lawyer in the courtroom. Everyone would believe what she said, no matter what it was, simply because she didn't seem to leave room for you to think otherwise.

"I hope you're right," Carol said, even though she believed that Michonne must be right.

Michonne turned back to her computer and Carol sat quietly for a few minutes. Before long, though, the silence became uncomfortable for her and she felt that she needed to fill it again.

"The little girls are yours?" Carol asked.

A nod.

"Anjelica and Celine," Michonne offered.

"They're beautiful," Carol said, getting up just enough to lean close to one of the pictures and get a better look at the happy little girls. She sat back in her chair and accepted the thanks that Michonne offered as a polite gesture to such a comment. "You own the firm?" Carol asked.

"I do now," Michonne supplied. "I—uh..." She hesitated a moment, focused on what she was doing, and then she looked back at Carol with a smile. "It was my father's practice. I took it over when he retired. I'd already been working here, so the transition wasn't too difficult. I took most of his clients, and I kept my own, but a few kind of went elsewhere. You know, the ones that were stuck in their ideas that they wanted a male lawyer or that they wanted someone who was closer in age to them."

Carol nodded because she didn't know what to say to that. She assumed that people had all kinds of beliefs and all kinds of reasons for doing what they did. She knew from life experience that she wouldn't necessarily understand even half of what drove some people.

"How many lawyers here?" Carol asked. "It just—it seemed kind of quiet."

"It's the hour," Michonne supplied. "And the day. I'm here pretty much all the time. Andrea? The blonde that showed you my office? She's here most days. Her days off pretty much coincide with when she doesn't have much to do. She works part time for the state, though. She handles a lot of representation for people who get taken into custody and need a court appointed attorney. It keeps her in and out of the office. Then there's—Jacqui. She's here five days a week. Family law so she's in and out a lot. Our secretary calls in sick more often than she doesn't."

Carol laughed to herself.

"Well, if you're looking for a new one..." she offered.

Michonne raised her eyebrows.

"Are you serious about that?" Michonne asked.

Carol considered it a moment. Honestly she'd said it as a knee jerk reaction. The truth of the matter was, though, that she could very much be serious about that.

"If I could be what you needed?" Carol said. "Then, yes. I'm serious about that."

"Bring me a resume," Michonne said. "Bring me a resume and—let's talk about it? After I get this done? Say—two days?"

Carol was taken aback. She'd come in here expecting help, but she hadn't expected a job offer that could be a step up from what she was doing now. As soon as the quick flash of shock wore off, fearing that she might be interpreted as not being interested in the job, Carol quickly nodded her head.

"That's great," she said. "That would be great! It would be wonderful. I can bring it whenever you want them."

Michonne smiled.

"Great," she said. "Then—I'll work on this and in a couple of days? I'll give you a call."

Carol thanked Michonne and realized that she was being excused when Michonne stood up. Carol stood too and reached to shake her hand. She thanked Michonne again and allowed the woman to see her to the office door before she started back down the hallway that she'd walked to get there.

On her way out, she nearly ran into the blonde again. Andrea. Carol smiled at her.

"Thank you, Andrea, for showing me Michonne's office," Carol said.

Andrea looked as surprised that Carol knew her name as she had been to find Carol in the office. She smiled again.

"It's no problem," Andrea said. "I hope she was able to help."

Carol nodded.

"She was," she assured Andrea. "And—if I'm not speaking too soon, there's a chance she might have helped me even more than. I might be taking a job here."

She got furrowed brows to go with the smile that looked more pasted on than anything.

"As a secretary," Carol clarified.

Now Andrea gave her a more sincere smile.

"Really? That would be great," she said. "We could use some help around here. Someone reliable. Shannon's a sweetheart, but she really has some problems keeping her—commitments?"

Carol nodded, not really knowing Shannon at all. Andrea quickly excused herself, gesturing toward one of the doors on the hallway, and she wished Carol luck by saying that she hoped she'd see her around. She hoped, as she clarified, that they'd be seeing a great deal more of each other when Carol got the job that she was surely going to get. When she disappeared into her office, closing the door behind her, Carol read the plaque outside of it and committed the name to memory—just as she had Michonne's, along with the names of her family—in the hope that knowing her new bosses might prove beneficial to her potential new employment.

_Andrea Harrison_.


End file.
